[osgeo4w-dev] New installer (and OSGeo4W 64bit)

[Jürgen E. Fischer]

Hi Steve,

On Mon, 12. Aug 2013 at 13:25:47 -0500, Lord Flaubert Steve Ataucuri Cruz wrote:
> > Also included are license files for most packages ($pkg-$ver-$pver.txt, but
> > also *.pdf and *.rtf) - for free and non-free licensed packages.

> Actually the installer only support  a txt file as a license

Sure.  But the ECW license is in RTF and the MrSID license is in PDF.

I suppose pdftotext and catdoc do a good enough job to produce plain text from
those.


> > As you might notice I didn't differentiate between free and non-free
> > licenses.  And therefore there are a lot of licenses the installer will
> > show and request to accept.

> It wasn't the idea, the installer only will show a license for restrictive
> packages , there are only three or four packages. Only few packages will have
> "license" entry in "setup.ini" file, not all.

Sure, but I feel that it somewhat belittles the free licenses.


> > I thought the md5sum would help to identify where the same license applies,
> > but I just notices that it doesn't even work for the GPL (lots of minor
< > difference in the files).  So that would need a different approach.  Any
> > thoughts?

> I don't understand you how md5sum might help to licenses, could you explain
> us in more detail way, please? or someone could give us another point of
> view.

Same license.  Same file content.  Same md5sum.   In that case we could have
just determine which packages share the same license by md5sum and display each
license only once with a list of packages that share it.

But unfortunately the md5sums don't match in setup.ini although the licenses
are virtually the same (except for the FSF address, blanks, formfeeds and stuff
like that).  So that doesn't work.

Some of the free packages don't even contain the full license text and only
reference the well known license (e.g. available form OSI,
http://opensource.org/licenses/).   So the current license files could be well
replaced with a pointer to that site.

Any maybe there should be another field in the setup.ini that tells us if a
license must be explicitly accepted.


> > More installer observations (probably at least partly already on Steve's
> > todo list):
 
> Thanks by your feedback I am working on it today

> > - the license display widget doesn't resize in the installer
 
> Done

Thanks.


> > - Line breaks don't show well
> > - Apparently the license display is (sometimes?) truncated and shows junk
> >   at the end.
> > - It doesn't track licenses that have already been agreed to (ie. on
> >   reinstall).
> > - Maybe we should also store them somewhere and produce license shortcuts
> >   in the program group (or just one to the directory). 
> > - How should non-text licenses (PDF, RTF) be handled?  I suppose we could
> >   just convert them to .txt in regen.sh.
 
> Yes I think it should be convert to .txt I dont know if it is easy to do.

Ok, I'll do that tomorrow then.


> > - The program group name is not configurable (ie. OSGEO4W_STARTMENU) multiple
> >   OSGeo4W installs overwrite each others shortcuts.

> > For the QGIS standalone installer I was planning to collect all the license
> > files into one LICENSE.txt that is presented on install.  Maybe that's also
> > an approach for the osgeo4w installer.   Collect the licenses, present them
> > in a large scrollable list and allow to accept them all at once.

> My mentor Frank told me this process had to do for each restrictive package
> but it can work if you collect all licenses files into one license.

Question is if that's a better approach for the osgeo4w installer or not.


Jürgen

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